Carolina Hurricanes are risking everything on Andersen and Raanta. It’s a worthy bet.
It can get a little lost in a summer of near-constant churn and turnover, amid roster movement and salary-cap shenanigans, among the millions handed out in new contracts to players new and old.
There’s still one huge question with this team, and no one knows the answer.
There’s no doubt the Carolina Hurricanes are a playoff team from the net out. They’ve proven that over the past three seasons, that they’re capable, even if nothing is guaranteed from year to year.
This season, like almost any season, will come down to the one position that changed more than any other. The Hurricanes are going to be as good as Frederik Andersen and Antti Raanta are, period. End of story. It begins with Andersen on Thursday against the New York Islanders.
“We’re going to play both of them,” Hurricanes coach Rod Brind’Amour said. “We know that. But I think he’s ready to go.”
And, OK, yes, let’s take a moment to appreciate that there’s a bit of dog-bites-man there. Nobody gets to the playoffs without good goaltending. Nobody advances without near-perfect goaltending. You can paper over a weak third defensive pairing or a bad power play, but there’s no way to hide in net.
The Hurricanes have been effectively shuffling bodies through the past three years — Petr Mrazek, Curtis McElhinney, James Reimer, Alex Nedeljkovic— with results that were at times respectable and at times exceptional, certainly good enough to get the Hurricanes through the regular season.
But the Hurricanes have lost the goaltending battle three times now on their way to elimination, and while untimely injuries played a role, it’s inarguable that the Hurricanes haven’t gotten the postseason goaltending they needed when they needed it — even when Tuukka Rask tapped out in the Toronto bubble.
Andrei Vasilevskiy may be the gold standard, but that doesn’t mean the Hurricanes can’t find someone to outplay him for two weeks. They at least had to try.
Andersen and Raanta are charged with helping this still-young-with-so-much-room-to-improve core and the new veteran depth maximize their considerable potential, and while the ceiling in net is unquestionably higher, each arrives with his own baggage.
Andersen is being asked to do what he couldn’t do in Toronto, where he never won a playoff series with the Maple Leafs. Raanta has played at an elite level when healthy; that just hasn’t been often enough lately.
It’s enough to ask, weren’t the Hurricanes just better off with Mrazek and Nedeljkovic? (Especially when the Leafs decided to replace Andersen with … Mrazek.)
Fair to ask. And still yet to be answered, to be sure. But even amid that uncertainty, there are a couple of good reasons to expect the Hurricanes to not only be better off but far better off with this tandem than their predecessors.
The ceiling is higher, especially if Raanta can get back to his best. The floor is higher, given Andersen’s proven reliability in the regular season. Without any disrespect to Mrazek or Nedeljkovic, less has to go perfectly along the way for the Hurricanes to end up in a better place.
“Obviously, we’ve played against them in the past,” Hurricanes center Vincent Trocheck said. “They’re two elite goaltenders. I think Freddie was awesome in Toronto. He was always tough to beat. We’re excited to have him back there.”
There’s a bit of a yin and yang there, the steady Dane and the swing-for-the-fences Finn, probably a good balance for a coach whose goal is for both of his goalies to end up playing 41 games in the end. Despite their resumes, they both have everything to prove. They’ll get that chance.
This story was originally published October 13, 2021 at 3:30 PM with the headline "Carolina Hurricanes are risking everything on Andersen and Raanta. It’s a worthy bet.."
